[Postcard #1] We are sitting in the dark, outside a single-room hut in the remote village of Manakpur Sharief. Through the darkness, I can make out the expressive wide eyes of Pala the algoza-player, and his never-ceasing broken-toothed smile. He wears a black and white striped turban. Rice paddies surround the village, and the humidity holds us. A woman with her head covered brings us first water, then tea with milk and sugar in steel cups. All that exists is this place, with its piles of hay and bricks, adobe huts and cows and chickens. A woman with a yellow chunri gathers firewood. A lone bird flies overhead, and a young girl stands on the rooftop of a hut, pointing out stars to the baby on her hip. The village gathers around us. Curious adults (who have maintained the innocent, trusting eyes of childhood) look on. We speak to Pala about his life and his music. We tell him about Beat of India, and how we want to help folk artists in creating awareness and availability of their music. He is clearly excited. He is eager to perform, to gather his accompanists, and do this in the best manner possible. And of course he is very happy to have visitors who have sought him out, and who want to listen to his music. We finalize the details of when we will hold the recording session.

We zigzagged across the state in the car, alongside cyclists in turbans and many herds of cattle, through a dusty haze, beneath an unrelenting sun. We covered over a hundred kilometers from Chandhigarh to Ropar, to Patiala, to Ludhiana, to Amritsar, with spontaneous outbursts of singing and clapping the likes of 'Mast Qalander'.

I gazed out the window, hardly believing that all this was real, and not simply out of a magazine. Rice paddies, mountains, bullock carts, and colorful people in colorful clothes. Small children in school uniforms carrying tiffin pails; walls with Punjabi lettering in blue, green, red, and yellow; rickshaws; brick barns; tall haystacks; cattle festivals; market places; temples; mosques; and rubbish piles. I was constantly in a trance.

[Postcard #2] Our trip was punctuated consistently with meals at roadside dhabas. Towards the end of the trip, we were less energetic but still a jolly bunch, and we greeted these scattered meccas bleary-eyed, sweaty, and bug-bitten. We sat on wooden cots, with truckers in turbans around us. These roads carried many travelers: herds of goats and cows, stray dogs, cyclists, trucks painted with festive peacocks and "om" symbols, and autos and scooters. The food arrived fast, a standard vegetarian thali was the norm. Red curry from rajmah drips across my plate, meandering like an extension of the Indus River. The thick roti I pull from the center is warm and heavy like land supporting endless rice paddies and cornfields. The daal is thick, like the humidity which holds us. A plate of chilies, cucumbers, onions, tomatoes, and lemon. Everything is in the center, to be shared, passed around. We ate with our fingers, unafraid to get our hands dirty. Afterwards, we pumped water from a wooden pump with a lever to wash our hands. There was always a steel pitcher of water that I, being an outsider and not immune, was forbidden to drink.